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'New Year's Eve Massacre': Trump Administration Makes Deep Cuts at FEMA as Climate Crisis Accelerates
A former FEMA official said that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without" the employees being terminated by the Trump administration.
Jan 02, 2026
The Trump administration this week made abrupt cuts to the top federal disaster response agency, even as US communities face increased threats from natural disasters caused by the global climate crisis.
Independent journalist Marisa Kabas reported on Wednesday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) "has begun issuing termination notices" to staff at the agency's Cadre of On-Call Response and Recovery (CORE) that are effective as of January 2.
A FEMA staffer who spoke with Kabas described the terminations as "The New Year's Eve Massacre," and explained that "the driving force behind all CORE employees is supporting and enacting the mission of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters."
A Thursday report from CNN added some additional details to Kabas' reporting, including that the decision to issue the layoffs was made by Acting Administrator Karen Evans, who was appointed to the role after former Acting Administrator David Richardson resigned in November.
One former FEMA official bluntly told CNN that the agency "can't do disaster response and recovery without CORE employees" that are being laid off by the administration.
The former FEMA official added that regional agency offices throughout the US "are almost entirely CORE staff, so the first FEMA people who are usually onsite won’t be there," which will mean that "states are on their own" when it comes to disaster response.
CNN also reported that there is anxiety among remaining FEMA staffers that these cuts could just be the start "of a larger effort" by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem "to shrink FEMA, potentially axing thousands of workers in the coming months who deploy during hurricanes, wildfires and other national emergencies."
President Donald Trump has been targeting FEMA for potential termination for nearly a year now, and he said shortly after being inaugurated last January that a goal in his second term would be "fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA," while emphasizing that individual states should bear the cost of responding to natural disasters.
“I think, frankly, FEMA’s not good,” the president said. “I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, and whether it’s a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA.”
The Trump administration's deep cuts to FEMA come as the intensity of natural disasters is only projected to increase thanks to climate change.
According to a report published on Tuesday by the Yale School of the Environment, 2025 was the second hottest on record and was only surpassed by the previous year.
"The last three years have been, by a wide margin, the hottest ever recorded," stressed the report. "Each of the last three years has measured more than 1.5°C warmer than preindustrial times, putting the world at least temporarily in breach of an international goal to limit warming below that level."
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Citing New Study, Sanders Calls Trump-GOP Budget Bill a 'Death Sentence' for 51,000 People Yearly
"In the wealthiest country in the world, we should be guaranteeing healthcare to all as a human right, not taking healthcare away from millions of seniors and working families to pay for tax breaks for billionaires."
Jun 03, 2025
An analysis released Tuesday by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale estimates that more than 51,000 additional people across the United States would die unnecessarily each year if the Republican Party's budget reconciliation package becomes law.
The analysis, requested by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), focuses specifically on the Trump-GOP bill's attacks on healthcare, examining the deadly consequences of throwing millions of people off Medicaid and barring implementation of a Biden-era rule requiring nursing homes that receive federal funding to meet minimum staffing levels.
The researchers project:
- 11,300 deaths from the loss of Medicaid or Affordable Care Act Marketplace coverage due to 7.7 million people losing coverage;
- 18,200 deaths due to the loss of Medicaid coverage among 1.38 million low-income Medicare beneficiaries, causing loss of access to low-income prescription drug subsidies; and
- 13,000 deaths among Medicaid enrollees in nursing homes due to the rollback of CMS's 2024 nursing home minimum staffing rule.
The analysis also finds that the GOP bill's failure to extend Affordable Care Act tax credits that are set to lapse at the end of the year would cause an additional 8,811 deaths per year, bringing the total to more than 51,300.
"Let's be clear. The Republican reconciliation bill, which makes massive cuts to Medicaid in order to pay for huge tax breaks for billionaires, is not just bad public policy. It is not just immoral. It is a death sentence for struggling Americans," Sanders said in response to the findings. "That's not Bernie Sanders talking. That is precisely what experts at Yale and the University of Pennsylvania have found."
"In other words, when you throw 13.7 million Americans off the healthcare they have as the CBO has estimated, when you increase the cost of prescription drugs for low-income seniors, and when you make nursing homes throughout America less safe, not only will some of the most vulnerable people throughout our country suffer, but tens of thousands will die," Sanders added. "We cannot allow that to happen."
Warren Gunnels, Sanders' staff director, contrasted the projected consequences of the Trump-GOP healthcare agenda with those of Medicare for All, which previous research suggests would prevent 68,000 needless deaths per year while saving the country hundreds of billions of dollars annually on healthcare costs.
Sanders argued Tuesday that "in the wealthiest country in the world, we should be guaranteeing healthcare to all as a human right, not taking healthcare away from millions of seniors and working families to pay for tax breaks for billionaires."
"As the ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, I will be doing everything that I can to see that this disastrous bill is defeated," said Sanders.
The new research was published as the Senate weighs the House-passed GOP reconciliation package, which would slash Medicaid by more than $700 billion over the next decade and enact deep cuts to federal nutrition assistance and other programs—all to help fund massive tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.
Late last week, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) sparked outrage with a sarcastic response to a constituent's warning that "people will die" from the GOP's proposed Medicaid cuts—a fear borne out by the new analysis from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania.
Over the weekend, Ernst followed up her remark with a non-apology that, to critics, underscored the cruelty of the Trump-GOP agenda.
"If Republicans get their way, families will be forced to choose between groceries or seeing a doctor, sick children will be turned away from care, and lives will be lost—and Ernst and Republicans don't seem to care," said Brad Woodhouse, president of the advocacy group Protect Our Care. "That's because the Republican healthcare agenda isn't about protecting families or lowering costs, it's about slashing millions' healthcare in order to bankroll massive tax breaks for the wealthiest individuals and companies."
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Ben-Gvir Says GOP Leaders Agree Gaza 'Food and Aid Depots Should Be Bombed'
The remarks by the Israeli national security minister, who is visiting the United States, came ahead of Israel's bombing of a food distribution center in central Gaza that killed three people, including at least one child.
Apr 24, 2025
An Israeli drone strike on a food distribution center in central Gaza that killed three Palestinians on Thursday underscored remarks earlier in the week by Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's national security minister, who said that Republican leaders told him during a meeting at U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort that they agree with his policy of bombing humanitarian aid depots in the embattled enclave.
Eyewitnesses said that an Israeli drone bombed a food distribution point in the town of al-Zawayda, killing three people, including at least one child, and wounding others. The bombing came amid a crippling Israeli blockade of Gaza that has fueled widespread starvation and sickness, with the United Nations relief coordination office warning earlier this week that the humanitarian crisis in Gaza has reached "unprecedented levels."
The Palestinian news outlet Wafa reported that Israeli airstrikes killed 52 civilians across the Gaza Strip since dawn Thursday, bringing the death toll from 566 days of Israel's U.S.-backed genocidal assault to at least 51,355, with more than 117,000 others injured, over 14,000 people missing and feared dead and buried beneath rubble, and millions more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened.
Thursday's attacks came after Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right Jewish Power party, said that "senior Republican Party officials" whom he met Tuesday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida "expressed support for my very clear position" that Gaza "food and aid depots should be bombed in order to create military and political pressure to bring our hostages home safely."
More than 250 Israeli and other hostages were taken during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel. It is believed that 24 hostages are still alive in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a fugitive from the International Criminal Court, has been widely accused of trying to scupper cease-fire and hostage release efforts in order to prolong the war and delay his criminal corruption trial.
On Wednesday, Ben-Gvir was invited by Shabtai, a secretive society co-founded in 1996 by Yale University graduate students including Cory Booker—who is now a Democratic U.S. senator—to speak at the elite Connecticut school. After his speech, Ben-Gvir waved and flashed the "victory" sign to pro-Palestinian protesters gathered outside the event, prompting some to throw water bottles at him.
Following a Tuesday night protest which it did not organize, the Yale chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine was stripped of its official club status by university officials, who cited concerns over "disturbing antisemitic conduct at the gathering"—without providing any evidence to support their claim.
Ben-Gvir continued his U.S. tour on Thursday, with planned visits to Jewish neighborhoods in New York City's Brooklyn borough.
Tuesday's remarks were not the first time Ben-Gvir—who was convicted in 2007 by an Israeli court of incitement to racism and supporting the Kahanist militant group Kach—has endorsed war crimes against Palestinians.
"Let's bomb the food reserves in Gaza, let's bomb all the power lines in Gaza. Why are there lights in Gaza? There must not be a single light. Stop the electricity," he said last month.
In January, Ben-Gvir resigned from Netanyahu's government in protest of its cease-fire and hostage release agreement with Hamas. He rejoined the government after it renewed its genocidal assault on Gaza last month.
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